| Facebook Press Event January 15: What Next Best to Expect from the Mark Zuckerberg Social Network?

Facebook Press Event January 15: What Next Best to Expect from the Mark Zuckerberg Social Network?

By: Gizbot Bureau

Updated: Tuesday, January 15, 2013, 18:22 [IST]

World's biggest and most addictive social networking site prevailing in the world right now - Facebook is finally going to outset its special press event in few hours from now, scheduled to be held at 10am Pacific Time at its Menlo Park headquarters.

When observing the last year the Mark Zuckerberg's network definitely buzzed the tech arena when the company went public on the stock market, despite a bumpy start. Hence in 2013, tech pundits are anticipating that now Facebook is going to implement a more organised structure and strategies in terms of advertising to monetize its profits.

Maybe, that's the reason why the social network's media invite reads "Come and see what we're building." Therefore, lets take a look at what all are the possibilities or what might Facebook announcements include, when it comes to the showdown of launches in the event today.

A Facebook Phone in the Making

Last week, numerous reports have noted a possibility that Facebook might foray in the smartphone battleground with the unwrapping of the much anticipated and rumored Facebook handset.

Specially, TechCrunch's MG Siegler reported Recently that the Facebook event will be mobile focused and could even bring a "Facebook phone" of sorts.

"And so, with that in mind, multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday," Siegler wrote. "Now for the caveats (and they're important). It's not entirely clear if this will be an actual piece of Facebook branded hardware or if they will simply use hardware from a phone maker to show off some sort of new Facebook OS for mobile. That is to say, it could very well be that the 'Facebook Phone' is more about a Facebook OS running on a phone (or a few phones)."

Supporting the same argument, ABC News noted that Facebook could launch a mobile phone, indicating that recently the social network introduced numerous apps including Poke, Camera, iPhone and Android refreshed apps along with added voice calls to its Messenger app. However, Mark Zuckerberg denied rumors of a Facebook-built phone in the past, saying he would prefer the company to build on current platforms.

But at the same time, citing several sources, TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler on Sunday said, "Multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday".

A Social Search Engine to Rival GoogleThe first piece of rumor on this came in March 2013, when a Businessweek report claimed that a team of more than 20 Facebook engineers, led by a former Google programmer was working on a vastly improved search engine within the site.

Reportedly Mark Zuckerberg has also pointed out quite a few times that the social network already handles a billion search queries a day and it plans to launch a social search engine powered by user activity.

Zuckerberg also hinted that Facebook could compete against Google and Microsoft's search engines. "When you think about it from that perspective, Facebook is pretty uniquely positioned to answer the questions people have. What sushi restaurants have my friends gone to in New York in the last six months and Liked?" he said at TechCrunch Disrupt.

"These are questions that you could potentially do at Facebook if we built out this system that you couldn't do anywhere else. And at some point we'll do it. We have a team working on search."

Timeline Cover Restyling

Reports are also rife that Facebook has been working on redesigning its Timeline covers and format. Also the social network is rumored to be working on new privacy policies so that the cover photos of the account holders do not get pulled down. Microsoft Partnership for New Facebook Messenger

As the software giant has already announced that on January 15, Microsoft will kill its long-lived Messenger service, hence many tech analysts are anticipating that Facebook and Microsoft will tie up on the same day in favor of Skype.

Facebook will launch an iPad compatible version of its messenger which will include emoticons, group messaging, read receipts, location tagging and the ability to share photos, the TechCrunch news reports revealed the same.